Charity poker night raises £270,000

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

The great and the good of the gaming industry were on hand at Les Ambassadeurs in Mayfair last Thursday for a special poker night to raise funds for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

After a highly successful evening the Raising The Stakes campaign is over half way to reaching its £500,000 target for the hospital's Critical Cardiac Unit. All told, £270,000 was raised on the night with cooking lessons with Italian chef Antonio Carluccio auctioned for an amazing £14,000.

PartyPokers's Warren Lush shared the honours with Sky Poker favourite Tony 'Tikay' Kendall in the poker tournament. The first prize for winning said tournament? A poker lesson with Tony 'Tikay' Kendall!

Ladbrokes CEO and chair of Raising the Stakes Richard Glynn (pictured left), said: “This is an amazing initiative. I am personally very proud to support Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. Raising the Stakes is a gaming industry first; it typifies the attitude and approach of this industry.”

Charles Denton, chairman of fundraising at Great Ormond Street children’s charity said, “I am thrilled that the gaming industry has come out in force to support Great Ormond Street Hospital. The new four-bed bay they are helping to fund will provide more space for nurses to carry out the 24-hour intensive care needed by young patients using the hospital’s Cardiac Critical Care Unit.”

Tuesday is the deadline for all working Americans to have submitted their income tax returns to the federal government and Juicy Stakes and Intertops Poker are set to mark this annual occasion by holding a special freeroll competition featuring a $1,000 top prize.

“We run a lot of higher stakes tournaments for our more hard-core players,” said Intertops’ poker manager. “But since our network is generally pretty soft, we created this series to give less competitive players a shot at winning.”